


Back in Time

by wayward_winter_soldier



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: 1994 was a lawless time for fashion, Garak is gay though, Gen, He has Childhood Trauma, Jadzia is still here, Julian Doesn't Like to be Called Jules, Let's say post Doctor Bashir I Presume, No Swearing Allowed, Post-Episode: s05e16 Doctor Bashir I Presume, So your Kids Can Read Along, The Beastie Boys rule, This is Pretty PG Because I Wrote it For a Library Newsletter, This takes place around season six I guess, Time Travel, Unconditional use of the word Dude, Wholesome Adventures, dude - Freeform, it's all good, poor Garak
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayward_winter_soldier/pseuds/wayward_winter_soldier
Summary: On their way to meet an ambassador, Julian and Sisko are transported to 1994 with no way to communicate with Deep Space Nine. They must work together to survive in the 20th century and to find out just who- or what- did this to them in the first place.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Back in Time

Captain Benjamin Sisko was not always the most patient man. It wasn’t as if he did not try to wait calmly without pacing holes into the flooring of his office, but it was hard in this day and age of instant results and gratification. He was glad, at least, that he had been born in the twenty-fourth century rather than the twentieth.  
There was an important ambassador arriving at Deep Space Nine from the Gamma Quadrant, and Sisko wished the alien diplomat had picked any other space station in the universe to make negotiations with. It wasn’t as if Benjamin was impolite or that any member on his senior staff was, he was just not the best representative that Starfleet had to offer.  
“Not a Jem’Hadar ambassador, I hope,” a male voice said from the doorway, interrupting the captain’s thoughts.  
Sisko looked up to see the Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Julian Bashir, his science officer blue dress uniform neatly ironed. The doctor was young, only in his early thirties, with dark brown hair that was almost black and cinnamon-colored skin that almost seemed to shimmer in the crude office lighting. He had a smile on his face that reached his almond eyes and showed off his deep dimples.  
“No, I would never do that to you,” Sisko smiled, gesturing at the young man to take a seat, which he followed suit. “A Teplan,” Benjamin continued, taking his own seat across from Julian.  
“Ah. So that’s why I’m here. Because I found a vaccine for their “Quickening” disease?” The man was still smiling so Sisko knew it was all in good humor.  
“No,” the captain replied, adjusting the torso of his dress uniform. “You’re here because I trust you.”  
The British doctor didn’t say anything for a minute, which was highly unusual and out of character. He had never thought he had a strong relationship with Captain Sisko. In fact, he had thought he was the least liked of the senior staff, only there because he was the CMO. Sure, he had made friends with everyone, even Bajoran Major Kira Nerys, but he still felt left out at times.  
“It’s an honor that you think that way,” Julian finally said, not trying to hide his dimples.  
Benjamin smiled back.  
“So, how did the Teplans get sophisticated technology again? The last I saw their homes had been left devastated by the Dominion.”  
“Well, they had some help from Starfleet, of course.”  
That was the only explanation the doctor needed. A chime sounded from Benjamin’s com and he answered.  
“Captain, the Teplan ambassador would like you to meet him via roundabout before he docks,” the voice of Jadzia Dax said, sounding calm and reassuring as always.  
“That’s a bit of a waste, is it not?” Julian interrupted, looking at Sisko expectantly.  
Benjamin ignored Julian’s question. “Tell him Doctor Bashir and I will meet him in ten minutes. Sisko out.”  
The captain stood and Julian Bashir followed, walking behind him as the two exited the office and into Operations. Major Kira watched from the center console as the two human men boarded the turbo lift to the docking bay.  
“Careful out there, Ben,” Dax said, smiling brightly.  
“Yeah, Julian, don’t talk too much,” Chief of Operations, Miles O’Brien, said in his deep Irish accent, winking at the young doctor, who only scowled in response.  
***  
“We’ll be to their ship in about three minutes, Captain,” Bashir said, his fingers dancing lightly over the control board.  
Sisko nodded in response, his mind on other matters. Why would the diplomat want them to meet him first through shuttlecraft? Something wasn’t right about this whole ordeal, but Benjamin just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  
“So,” Julian started, not being able to be silent for less than what seemed like a second. “Why’s the ambassador meeting us all the way out here?”  
“I don’t know, Doctor. I just don’t know.”  
Suddenly, the small roundabout shifted violently, sending the two Starfleet officers to the floor in surprise. Constant beeping began to alert the occupants of danger.  
“There’s something attacking!” Bashir cried out as he struggled his way over to the com. “It’s not just normal space turbulence!”  
“Who is firing?” exclaimed Benjamin, who had made his way to his feet.  
“They’re cloaked, Sir! I can’t get a lock on them.”  
The shuttle shook again and this time the men were prepared, grabbing on to the walls to keep from falling over. The bright lights of weapons discharge met their view screen as Julian hastily tried to manoeuver the craft out of harm’s way.  
“This was a setup,” Sisko mumbled, trying his best to receive communications from at least Deep Space Nine but failing.  
“Sir! We’re speeding up! And I can’t slow us down!”  
Benjamin ran over to Bashir, watching as the speed indicator rose quickly. He tried shutting down the engines to no avail.  
“This has the Dominion written all over it,” Julian spoke, his voice raised slightly to be heard over all the alarms going off.  
“I can’t hail the enemy ship!”  
“Sir, if we keep speeding up, we could enter a temporal vortex.”  
“Meaning?” Sisko asked, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.  
“Meaning, we could travel through time and space!”  
***  
“Major, I’m not getting any com links from the runabout,” O’Brien said, a hint of worry in his voice.  
“What? They should be at the meet place by now, at least,” Kira said, standing from her station and walking towards the chief.  
“Nothing. Just…”  
“...radio silence,” Kira finished O’Brien’s words, her face trying its best not to show emotion but failing slightly.  
“Benjamin and Julian will be okay,” Dax said, knowing she had to comfort her friend. “They always are.”  
***  
“Sir! Warp Nine!” Bashir cried out, his fingers still rapidly pushing buttons on the control panel.  
“The runabout can’t even go that fast!” Sisko yelled, still trying to contact the vessel that had attacked them in the first place.  
“Sir! Warp Nine point Three-”  
The doctor’s words were cut off as the panel exploded, sending Julian flying to the ground, his uniform catching on fire  
“Bashir!” Sisko exclaimed, running over to the doctor to put out the fire. The doctor was now unconscious, his dress uniform slightly singed and smears of dark black grease and dirt colored his facial features.  
The shuttle continued to speed up uncontrollably and nothing Sisko could do would stop it.  
***  
Julian Bashir blinked his eyes open. They were heavy like weights had been attached to his eyelids or as if he had been asleep for a million years. He sat up to take in his surroundings, noticing that he was still in the roundabout, but it was no longer moving. Also, Benjamin Sisko was nowhere to be found.  
“Captain?” Julian called out, struggling to his feet as he did. He slid his hands down his uniform, feeling the holes that had been burned into it from the explosion.  
“Garak will kill me if I come in with another uniform repair,” Julian sighed, thinking of the Cardassian tailor fondly as he did. He wished that he was back on the station, discussing literature over lunch with Garak. But he wasn’t. He didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know where his captain was either.  
“Captain Sisko?” Julian tried again, making his way to the view screen to see just where in the universe he had landed. It turned out, the reason they were no longer moving was because they had docked on land. The young doctor hoped the air was breathable and the scans (which seemed to be the only thing working beside the replicators) stated that Julians had finally had a wish fulfilled.  
The young doctor stepped out onto the grassy exterior, looking around curiously. The skies were those of Earth. In fact, everything looked like Earth, with the large oak trees that towered over the winding roads leading to skyscrapers to the sun beaming down above Julian, warming his skin in a pleasing manner.  
“Where am I?” Julian asked himself, not expecting a response.  
“Earth,” someone who sounded familiar said from behind, and Julian jumped, turning to see the owner of the voice.  
It was Benjamin Sisko, no longer wearing his Starfleet dress uniform, instead, he wore a dull red button-down shirt and worn, high-waisted jeans, work boots of a sort to compliment the ensemble.  
“Oh Captain, I’ve been looking for you!” the doctor smiled, not at all noticing the captain’s hold on his arm as he was pulled back into the shuttle. “Where did you go?”  
Now inside, Sisko let go of Julian. “I went to see where we were. It’s Earth, but Doctor, you were right about the vortex. This isn’t our year, not even our century.”  
Julian took a better look at the captain’s current clothing. “Is that why you’re dressed like that? What year is this? Captain, how are we going to get back? The coms are-”  
Benjamin held up his hand to stop Julian from continuing with his questions. “It’s the twentieth century, the year nineteen ninety-four to be exact.”  
Julian’s eyes widened. How were they supposed to get home from nineteen ninety-four? Space travel was not yet sophisticated enough as the first warp engine would not bee invented until the next century. They stood hardly any chance unless they so happened to run into the ship that sent them here in the first place.  
“Do you think that the Dominion was behind this?” Julian asked though he feared to hear the answer.  
“Honestly, Doctor? I do. I don’t know how quite yet. All I know is that you need to get changed. No one in nineteen ninety-four needs to see your Starfleet-issued uniform. And besides, if we’re going to make it home, we have to survive here first, to make sure the station has passengers to pick up.”  
Julian nodded distractedly, not noticing Sisko replicating period-era clothing for him or really anything else around him. It was as if time had slowed to an extremely slow pace just to leave Julian confused and lost. He hoped and wished the senior staff would notice their disappearance quickly and bring them home, especially before either Julian or Sisko changed history.  
“Doctor, put these on.”  
Julian accepted the clothing from Sisko and went into one of the sleeping quarters. His new attire consisted of a black T-Shirt that displayed a logo for something called The Beastie Boys, a blue and red flannel that seemed much too big, jeans that resembled Sisko’s and a pair of shoes that Julian identified as sneakers, an old Earth fashion obsession.  
Bashir changed quickly, cuffing the hem of his jeans after tying the shoelaces of the Converses he wore. Though the clothing was quite comfortable, Julian felt anything but that. He felt out of place, like a bad actor in an old Shakespeare play.  
“There’s a city down that road. I went there earlier while you rested. I think I can get us a place to stay, maybe even jobs.”  
“A job at a hospital?” Julian asked absentmindedly as the two began to walk away from the shuttlecraft, hoping no one would discover it through their clever disguise of tree branches.  
“I’m afraid not. Most likely we’ll just clean a few floors. But, we need to eat,” Sisko said, trying his best to be the level-headed one in this situation.  
Julian sighed deeply, thinking about all the patients that must require his attention back on Deep Space Nine. What he wouldn’t give for his only problem to be more than enough paperwork to get through or Chief O’Brien with another white water rafting accident.  
Sisko seemed to be able to sense Julian’s stress. “It’ll be okay,” he spoke in a reassuring voice, a rare smile appearing. “We’ll get through this.”  
“Captain, I hope you’re right.”  
***  
The station was in Yellow Alert, and Garak wasn’t an idiot. He knew the reason. He may be a tailor now, but he was once an excellent spy and old habits died hard, as humans would say.  
The Cardassian exited his shop and into the Promenade. Bajoran security officers were rushing around, along with Starfleet’s security teams as well. Garak felt a knot tie in his stomach, hoping this wasn’t about that ambassador visiting the station, but knowing him, his luck wasn’t that good.  
Julian had talked about it at their last lunch, a pleasant meal at Quark’s. He seemed excited even though he didn’t know the alien race that would be visiting. Garak sat back and smiled while the doctor rambled on, a habit the young man had.  
Garak wasn’t smiling anymore as he made his way to Ops, knowing that Major Kira would likely throw him off the bull pin, but not caring much about that at the moment. When he arrived, Operations was busy with workers, mostly Starfleet’s engineering staff. Garak watched as Chief O’Brien ordered around young ensigns, trying his best to get whatever was broken to work.  
“If I may ask, what seems to be the problem?” Garak asked, his eyes not focused on Kira so much as everything around her.  
“Garak, what’re you doing here?”  
“Well, Major, I saw that the station had gone to Yellow Aler-”  
“Garak, I don’t have time for this. Go back to the Promenade before I call Odo to escort you out.”  
“Nerys, he’s concerned for Julian, can’t you see?” Jadzia interpreted, moving towards the two and their hostile conversation.  
Kira said nothing. She wasn’t the greatest at emotions and it was no secret of her dislike for Cardassians. She knew she was being insensitive, but she was worried about Sisko, as well as Bashir.  
“I’m sorry, Garak. We lost contact with the runabout Doctor Bashir and Captain Sisko were on. We don’t know what happened, by the chief is trying his best to regain contact.”  
Garak nodded, his thoughts running wild. The Cardassian prided himself on not jumping to conclusions, but he couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the worst had happened to the pair.  
“If it’s not too much trouble, could you alert me if you regain contact with Doctor Bashir?” Garak requested, no emotion apparent on his face. Dax, living over three hundred years, was wiser.  
“Of course, Garak. I’ll let you know the second I do. I promise.”  
The tailor nodded, smiled softly, and left to return to his shop to try and not let his imagination run too wild.  
***  
Sisko was correct; there was indeed a city just down the road. It was so close, in fact, that Julian presumed that they had just left a park of sorts for it was the only explanation of the sudden transfer from rural to urban.  
“Remember, this is a less civilized time, Doctor. You must not break the Prime Directive.”  
Julian nodded. This wasn’t his first away mission straight out of the academy. He’d time traveled before, but never this far back, the farthest being The Bell Riots of two thousand and twenty-two.  
The city was alive with what seemed like thousands of people going about their normal lives, unaware of the time travelers who had just stumbled in. The city wasn’t too large, not quite as huge as San Francisco, which Julian frequented often while in Starfleet Academy as a way to simply take a break from being an academic once in a while. It wasn’t, however, small in any way, either.  
“Where’s this place you talked about?” Julian asked as he continued to look around, perplexed by a man in a business-type suit reading a paper.  
“Just up here. And stop staring, you’re going to draw unwanted attention.”  
Julian listened, drawing his head forward as he walked next to Sisko, who seemed to fit in quite nicely. This whole world seemed so alien and strange to Julian, even though this would be his home in three hundred years.  
“Yo, dude, love your shirt!” a voice called out and it took Julian a few seconds to figure out that the man was talking to him.  
“Um, thanks… dude…”  
The man didn’t seem to notice how uncomfortable Julian was and continued to walk down the sidewalk, nodding along to an old music device Julian later learned was called a walkman. When he was out of earshot, Sisko began laughing despite the dirty looks he was getting from Julian.  
***  
The building Sisko spoke of was a bit run down with a red brick exterior and an ancient wooden sign that read it was a bookstore. The building was an old-style type, from a time where people would live above their establishments.  
“A bookstore?” Julian questioned, but Sisko ignored him as he pushed the door open, a small bell dinging against the glass of the window.  
“I’m the man from before. Benjamin Sisko,” the captain called out.  
The bookstore was very cluttered with mismatching shelves that reached the ceiling, filled with colorful volumes of books made of paper, something Julian was still getting used to.  
“Yeah, I remember,” a female voice called out from a large stack of books. “Shisko.”  
“Sisko,” Benjamin corrected.  
“Right, right.”  
Julian finally was able to see the woman. She was middle-aged with wild brown hair tied up in a bun that was desperate to escape. She had blue eyes and a face full of freckles that highlighted her light skin. Her clothes were wrinkled and the collar of her shirt had a red stain on it that made Julian think of jam.  
“Who’s this, your son?”  
Julian blushed deeply. He looked younger than he was, sure, but he never thought he looked young enough to appear to be his captain’s son.  
Sisko smiled at the woman, who was leaning against a wall, staring at the odd pair who had found their way into her grandfather’s book shop.  
“No, not my son. A friend. Julian Bashir.”  
“Nice to meet you, Jules.”  
“Please don’t call me that,” Julian winced at the name.  
“Alright, Julian. I’m Sarah Ginsberg. This is my grandfather’s bookshop. I heard you two were in need of a job, so here’s a job.”  
Julian didn’t say anything as Sarah led them through the maze of bookshelves, not looking behind her to see if the two men were keeping up. She seemed sporadic in thought and Julian was reminded of himself when he was younger and had had too much caffeine. The doctor’s eyes traveled around the room as they walked, catching glimpses of potted plants, overstuffed armchairs, and an old orange cat sunbathing in one of the windows. The shop was cluttered, yet cozy, and made Julian wish that he had been born earlier in time.  
“My granddad really just needs help with this and that; work the register, restock, sweep, the usual. He’s getting sicker in his old age.”  
“What’s wrong with him?” Bashir blurted out, his medical curiosity getting the better of him despite Sisko’s glare.  
“Cancer,” the woman shrugged. “Nothing we can do, I’m afraid.”  
Julian desperately racked his brain for twentieth-century medical facts. Did they discover chemotherapy by now? He wasn’t sure, he was a doctor, not a historian.  
Benjamin gave Julian a look that clearly told him to back off and he did just that, choosing to stay quiet as they finally walked through a door labeled private.  
“Do you and your grandfather live here?” Sisko asked as he looked around what appeared to be a very well-lived in apartment.  
“Yeah,” Sarah said, but she didn’t elaborate. “Make yourself at home. I’m thinking you need a place to stay too, huh?”  
“What makes you say that?” Benjamin asked in the least defensive way he could.  
The woman smiled brightly and moved her shoulders up quickly. “Just a feeling I had. And my feelings are usually right, you know?”  
Sisko didn’t know, but he took her word for it.


End file.
